Trahison des clercs
Sir: The article in your issue of 8 December criticises not only the publishers of the advertise- ment in The Times hut also the young men who tear up their draft cards. You say that these young men have constitutional means of overturning the present policy of the United States government. This is the stock argument of those who are not personally involved. The young men with the draft cards are personally involved. An awful lot of them are going to be killed before the constitu- tional machinery can work, if ever, to put an end to this evil war. These young men have no other means of practical or effective protest. They have seen a democratically elected government act- ing undemocratically. At least 50 per cent of the American people are against the Vietnam war, and yet the government of the United States, under pressure from the militarists in the Pentagon and for its own political motives, plans a further escalation. It is only these young men who can curb these plans.
Whenever governments make wars, and it is only governments who make wars, it is the young men who are marked for the slaughter. The young men of today are getting wise to this and have decided not to stand for it. 'We who are about to die salute you' has no longer any currency.
The article states your opposition to the war, but on what grounds! That it is an error of judg- ment, a threat to world peace and contrary to the best interests of the United States. Not a word about the massacre of a small people, not a word about the deliberate bombing of villages and the murder of women and children, not a word about the interference of a, great power in the internal affairs of a small country that wants to be united, not a word about the support by American bayonets of a government that is opposed by the mass of the common people. A vicious landlord system now holds sway in South Vietnam, backed by American power. That is one reason why the most powerful military nation in the world is unable to subdue the peasants of Vietnam.
The young men of America do not want to support a war waged for objects such as these. They are demonstrating their disapproval in the only way possible, and with the knowledge that all right-thinking people are on their side.
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